Tony emailed me on December 17th with the following message:
Do you have an opinion of why Jay is reporting so much more snow (188”) so far this season than Stowe (106”) and Smugg’s (114”)? I multiply Jay by 90% for implicit average with the lower unquoted number I get at the end of the season, but 169 is still a huge disparity vs. Stowe and Smugg’s.
The subject is under discussion in this thread, here I referenced your and Scott’s extensive thoughts about Jay’s reporting in 2015:
https://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/threads/northern-vt-what-a-start.15436/#post-99653
We know from Scott’s comments that Jay’s reporting is not formal; it’s seat of pants by early morning ski patrol. But I’d appreciate it if you would contribute to the current thread as you know Vermont microclimates far more than the FTO peanut gallery.
Tony Crocker
I hadn’t put too much thought into why
Jay Peak was reporting so much more snow than
Stowe and
Smugg’s at that point in the season, but I’ve finally had a chance to think about it and write something up. Checking on the current season totals for the resorts along the spine of the
Northern Greens from north to south I’m seeing:
Jay Peak 219”,
Smugg’s 143”,
Stowe 134”, and
Bolton 133”. That seasonal accumulation order is exactly as we see it play out the vast majority of the time, with the highest totals up north and the totals tapering as you move south. However, there’s a much larger difference between
Jay Peak and the resorts to the south than we usually see. Why is that snowfall difference between
Jay Peak and the other resorts especially large this season? The bottom line is that I really don’t know, but I can certainly provide some thoughts and perspectives for discussion.
As much as snow measurement at
Jay Peak is a bit of a black box,
the 2014-2015 discussion and this thread have been quite enlightening for me, and the AI encapsulation by jamesdeluxe was a wonderful addition to the conversation. I hadn’t formalized my thoughts around ski area snow measurement before, but it really does seem that there are two main approaches to the process of reporting ski area snowfall, and they both have their merits. There’s the “old school” method of having patrol, mountain operations, marketing folks, etc. poke around the mountain, get some measurements in various spots, and then decide on a range of accumulations to report. This has the potential to provide a decent sense for the range of new snow depths that skiers might experience around the resort, but it lacks the methodological rigor to consider it some sort of official climate record. Then there’s the rigorous approach of monitoring one site, or a few specific sites at the resort, and reporting snow accumulations consistently from those locations. This approach has much greater validity with respect to serving as some sort of climate record, but reporting a single number from a single site at a huge resort lacks the nuance and utility of actually conveying the range of accumulations and conditions that skiers might experience. When
Powderfreak first created his ~3,000’ fixed
High Road Snow Plot and used it in conjunction with a fixed ~1,500’
Barnes Camp Snow Plot, it seemed like the obvious evolution in improving the accuracy of snow measurements at the resort. But now I realize that he often caveats that measurement with comments such as “It skis like ABC at this elevation and this aspect, and XYZ at this elevation and this aspect, etc.”, whether in the official report text, or in discussions on forums etc. When I’m out ski touring, I’ll often make measurements at various elevations to relay some snowpack and/or accumulations information for others that might be heading out, such as the list from
my November 6th report at Bolton Valley:
Nov 1 –> Nov 6
1,000’: 0” –> 0”
1,200: T” –> T
1,500’: T-1” –> 1”
2,000’: 1-4” –> 3-6”
2,500’: 4-6” –> 5-9”
2,800’: 7-11” –> 9-12”
3,150’: 7-11” –> 10-16”
Even for each specific elevation band, I get a range of depth measurements, so imagine how difficult it would be to convey the wealth of snow depth information above with a single measurement of snow depth from a single site at a single elevation. I guess in a perfect world, every ski area would practice a combination of both methods to provide the most information for skiers and climate data, and they would be transparent about their methodology. It seems like Tony’s approach of taking a percentage of
Jay Peak’s high-end snowfall number is a reasonable way of getting something representative if one doesn’t have access to all the desirable data. In any event, when I see
Jay Peak’s high-end snowfall total for the season, I always assume it’s the total sum of the high end measurement for each day. So yes, that’s basically the top amount of snow that fell at the resort, probably not in the exact same spot every time, but if you went every day and hit just the right locations, you would presumably encounter that much snow throughout the season. We know the methodology used with that approach is not overly rigorous, but one has to assume it’s a decent representation of their snowfall unless you’re into some sort of conspiracy theory that
Jay Peak has been able to pull off an organized scam in their snow reporting through decades of different ownership, different management, different employees, etc. The area clearly gets a ton of snow, and in that respect, it’s been business as usual up there so far this season as the social media has shown:
I can add one final, more local note on
Jay Peak’s snowfall this season. I haven’t been up to ski in the
Jay Peak area yet, so my closest link to what’s going on there is the discussions in the
Northern New England thread at the American Weather Forum.
Jay Peak’s snowfall is a general topic of discussion there, and it sometimes comes up in
the skiing thread as well. Member
bwt3650 has a place up there at the resort, and he’s not there all the time, but when he is, he’s pretty good about commenting on the
Jay Peak Snow Report and how it correlates to what fell at his place near the base. Of course he’s not getting the same accumulations that the summit area is getting, but he sees the general trends. Occasionally he’ll note if there is a surprising discrepancy between what the mountain reported and what he’s seen for snow at his place, but I can’t recall any major discussions about that this season.
Anyway, those were just some thoughts on the snowfall measurement concepts, but I figured I’d add a few interesting topics below that could also relate to some of the discussion about
Jay Peak’s snowfall this season:
1) For a number of seasons now, meteorologists in
the New England Forum at American Weather have been pointing out some interconnected climate change-related concepts such as the expansion of the
Hadley Cell, the observed increases in the speed of the jet stream, and the resulting more “progressive” or “zonal” flow across
North America. Basically, climate change appears to be making the upper-level jet stream's fastest winds accelerate (faster-get-faster phenomenon), increasing about 2.5 times faster than average winds due to amplified temperature contrasts from warming. Simultaneously, the
Hadley Cell is expanding poleward and intensifying, transporting more energy, with greenhouse gases being a key driver in the Northern Hemisphere, impacting global weather patterns. These changes, linked to warming and moisture gradients, lead to stronger, faster winds in the jet stream and shifts in the
Hadley Cell's boundaries, affecting mid-latitude weather. It comes up in the forum because in
Southern New England, an appropriately amplified weather pattern with a trough in the right place is a key component in generating
nor’easters, which are often a major contributor to the total winter snowfall in that area. The topic has come up in forum discussions because
nor’easters are such a coveted component of
Southern New England snowfall that the winter weather weenie types there are always looking for appropriately amplified and positioned weather patterns to support those storms and bemoaning other weather patterns (such as more progressive/flatter jet stream setups) that don’t support them. There haven’t been a ton of slam dunk
nor’easters in recent years, so some of these climate change-related themes have come up as potential explanations. It will take a much longer period of record to really know if this is just some sort of typical cyclical trend in weather patterns or part of a longer-term shift, but combined with warmer temperatures in the
Great Lakes and longer-lasting moisture availability from that source persisting longer into the winter season, the discussion has made me realize how
good a more “progressive” weather pattern can be for snowfall in the
Northern Greens. We actually call these northern jet stream-dominated progressive weather patterns with
Alberta Clippers, other small systems, cold fronts, shortwaves, modest upper- and mid-level troughs,
lake-effect or lake-enhanced snows,
upslope snow, etc. our “bread and butter” type patterns, because we get so much of our consistent, refreshing/sustaining snows in this way. For most locations, an
Alberta Clipper, being a generally moisture-starved northern-jet system, means a light snowfall of 1 to 3 inches, but for the
Northern Greens, being the first perpendicularly-oriented range downstream of the
Great Lakes and providing 4,000 feet of orographic lift, these little systems can often produce 6, 12, or even 18 inches or more of snow. Those of us who pay close attention to the weather in the
Northern Greens know how important these systems are, but most people are oblivious to them – they’re typically “nothing” systems that don’t get mentioned by anyone. Nobody in the
Northeastern U.S. outside of
Northern Vermont typically knows or cares about them. Even people in the
Champlain Valley just a few miles away often don’t know about them, or if they know about them it’s because the valley picked up an inch or two, but they don’t realize that the storm produced a foot of snow in the local mountains. The discussion about the potential for more progressive/zonal flow weather patterns in our area got me thinking, and I realized that we’d a couple of notable, extended periods with this type of pattern over the past year or so. We had a solid stretch with that type of pattern last winter for a couple of months, and then we had another one at the beginning of this season that led to its strong start. I’d argue it was this pattern that set up the fact that this thread even exists. What I’ve come to realize over the past few seasons is that as much as a
Northern Greens progressive/zonal “bread and butter” pattern brings good ski conditions due to the frequent and often prodigious snowfall, perhaps even more important is what the pattern
doesn’t bring. The largest detriments to a typical ski season in the
Northern Greens are amplified storms that pass to the west of
New England and put our area in the warm sector of the storm. This not only means we aren’t getting snow from the front end of the storm cycle, but it can also means the area is getting a substantial shot of rain, which consolidates and ruins the quality of the snowpack. And if it’s a large enough system running to our west, it can even mean some melting of the snowpack. As noted, the
Northern Greens typically have plenty of storms and moisture in a progressive or zonal flow, and “average” winter temperatures (the temperatures that are typically observed with a zonal/non-amplified pattern) are more than cold enough for snow in
Northern Vermont. One wonders how a season’s snowfall/snowpack might progress without any major thaws due to wound up systems running to the west of our area…
What really tipped the scales in my thinking was what happened at the beginning of this season.
Mt. Mansfield reached record snowpack depths for various dates, and it happened without
any big coastal systems – the notable snowpack developed simply because of what was largely a rather modest zonal/progressive “bread and butter” weather pattern. The strong start and record depths made enough of an impression that while I reporting on the season’s snowfall progression from our weather observations site in the valley, I made
the following post to the Northern New England thread at American Weather:
Now that we’ve hit the mid-month period, I’d been meaning to put out an update on the seasonal snowfall progression and check where things stand with respect to other seasons. As the data show, this season’s snowfall progression (red trace in the plot below) is clearly running above average. But as much as everyone has been talking about how outstanding this season has been, its snowfall is really just running in a similar manner to how 2018-2019 progressed (green trace in the plot below). In fact, this season has generally been running behind the 2018-2019 snowfall pace. And for even more perspective on this season’s snowfall, it’s now well behind the 2007-2008 pace (blue trace in the plot below). At this point, the second half of December would have to put on quite a snowfall performance to even be in the same league as 2007-2008. That was a season which essentially stacked a 20-inch November with a 70-inch December, so it’s not surprising that it holds the current snowfall record for that combo in my data set.
As of mid-December, all of the resorts along the spine of the Northern Greens have recorded 100”+ of snowfall on the season, and Jay Peak is approaching 200”. But, this season’s snowfall is basically running in line with what we saw just had a few season’s back, and well behind 2007-2008, so why does it seem like such a strong start? The deviation from average snowfall pace may be a bit more in the mountains than the valleys, but I think a big factor in making this feel like such a strong start to the season has been the temperature consistency. Indeed temperatures have been well below average over this stretch, but they don’t have to deviate much if at all from average to get good snow at this time of year – especially in the higher elevations. I’m sure there are seasons that can attest to that, but I really think it’s the temperature consistency that has been helping to get us to where we are.
Temperature consistency has clearly been a positive, but somewhat inseparable from that factor in this great start to the ski season has been the general pattern/storm track. And one could argue that the process of getting all the snow we’ve seen has been a bit counterintuitive. The local resorts have reached 100”+ of snowfall in just a month or so without any huge coastal systems, and without even getting any of our classic stacked lows sitting in the Maritimes. All this snow has basically been achieved through modest bread and butter systems without a highly amplified pattern. What’s certainly impressive is that we’ve gotten to where we are with a generally progressive flow of Clippers and similar events, but the more important part is that without a highly amplified pattern, we haven’t had to deal with many warm storms passing to our west. We’ve seen few rainy systems, and even few mixed precipitation events over the past month or so. If you ask me, that’s why Mansfield has achieved this record snowpack – it’s avoiding the “two steps forward… one step back” type of sequence that comes with those more amplified patterns and huge systems. I don’t think it would be strange at all for someone to assume that if you’re going to get to a record Mansfield snowpack, you’d need to do it with the help of a monster system or two… but this season flies right in the face of that idea. Cleary, the type of pattern we’ve been seeing is something notable/special if it’s tied or beaten out snowpack depths from the past 70 to 80 years of record keeping.
We obviously know about the critical importance of these types of patterns up here with the fact that we use the “bread and butter” terminology, but I’ve come to appreciate them more and more every year. Growing up, we were always on the lookout for “nor’easters”, since they obviously make a big splash in the news, and everyone talks about them, but as kids we wouldn’t have known any better. If this type of less amplified/more progressive weather pattern that we’ve been seeing is indeed going to become more common around here as some of the meteorologists are suggesting, one has to think there’s going to be improving chances for more stretches like this. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see (and ski) if we get more of these stretches going forward.
When it comes to 70+ years of data, record snowpack depths do
not grow on trees, so it makes one want to take a look at the weather pattern that led to the situation. It was
not a weather pattern of massive coastal systems, or one could argue
any coastal systems of significance.
Powderfreak initially pushed back on my assertion about the lack of “big systems”, noting a couple of storm cycles that had produced 20 inches of snow on Mansfield, but I followed up with the post below, and he agreed with me once he understood what I meant. Here’s the follow up post, showing the storms we’d had at our site through the middle of December:
What one considers a “big” storm is sort of arbitrary/subjective, so there’s certainly room for pushback. But your comments help to make the point – I can’t even tell you when those two 20” cycles occurred. I’m not sure if anyone in the forum other than you knows when they happened. Most likely they were “nothing” events in terms of their impacts on the majority of the Northeast. There have only been three TWC named winter storms so far this season, and they all impacted us and are in the list below, but none of them were named for their impacts in our area because their effects here were minor as you can see by their accumulations at our site. Alston and Bellamy earned their names because of impacts in the Midwest, and Chan was named because of impacts off to our south. If you look at this list below of the 18 storms that have hit our site so far this season, it’s loaded with Clippers, cold fronts, and shortwaves. My main argument was that the Mansfield stake has reached record depth without being in the sweet spot for any major synoptic storms. If someone told me that Mt. Mansfield had reached a record snowpack depth for mid-December, I’d assume there had to have been at least a couple of major synoptic storms in which our area was in the perfect position to cash in and get a ton of snow. But that hasn’t been the case. And, what’s more interesting is to consider that perhaps the record depth wasn’t achieved just in spite of not getting hit by those big synoptic storms, but the record depth was actually achieved because we were in a pattern that wasn’t conducive to creating big storms. What has transpired so far this fall just proves that it’s not necessary to have multiple perfectly placed coastal storms to achieve a record mountain snowpack around here - that’s the part I find most counterintuitive and intriguing.
Below is the list of accumulating storms that have affected our site so far this season, and it should be just about the same list for the local mountains. The description of each storm is included, and none of them were big coastal systems. The closest to a typical nor’easter was Winter Storm Chan, but it was still quite weak, and its effects this far north were fairly minimal (only 4.8 inches for a storm total at our site).
My argument was that we’d reached a record snowpack on
Mt. Mansfield with a parade of our typical “modest” bread and butter systems, and I think this has a lot of potential relevance to the
Jay Peak snowfall discussion. These “nothing” systems that nobody knows or cares about (aside from those of us who live and ski in the
Northern Greens) deliver 6, 12, or 18 inches at a time, and a very important thing to remember is that
Jay Peak is the absolute
king if these systems. So, in the case of a persistent
Northern Greens “bread and butter” pattern, it would not be surprising to see
Jay Peak doing exceptionally well. Did they do well enough to account for a larger than usual discrepancy between their snowfall and resorts further south? Well, if there was a pattern that could do it, the one we had to start off this season might be the one.
2) Another interesting association to consider regarding this season’s snowfall totals at
Jay Peak is the depth of the snowpack on
Mt. Mansfield.
Powderfreak’s typical rule of thumb for the association between snowfall and snowpack depth in a
continental or
intermountain/transitional type of snowpack environment (which is how the snowfall climate behaves around here when a progressive/zonal flow predominates like we’ve seen during this early season) is that the settled snowpack is roughly 1/3 of the snowfall. So for example, 300 inches of snowfall should produce 100 inches of snowpack. Therefore,
Mt. Mansfield’s 63-inch snowpack achieved in mid-December would equate to roughly 189 inches of snowfall, which is conspicuously close to the 188 inches of snowfall reported by
Jay Peak. One of course has to wonder why in the world the number reported through
Stowe’s rigorous measurements (on the same mountain where the
Mt. Mansfield Stake is located) was so much lower than that. First off, remember that
Powderfreak’s 3,000’
High Road Snow Plot on
Mt. Mansfield is 700 feet lower than the location of the
Mt. Mansfield Stake. He does have a stake for snowpack depth at his 3,000’ plot though, and for reference, it was up to a foot lower (
53 to 58 inches) than the depth at 3,700’ at that time. We don’t have a stake to know snowpack depth up on
Jay Peak, but we can assume their upper mountain snow accumulations are taken near summit elevation (3,862’) in wind-sheltered leeward locations similar to the locations of the 3,700’
Mt. Mansfield Stake,
Powderfreak’s 3,000’
High Road Snow Plot, and
Powderfreak’s 1,500’
Barnes Camp Snow Plot. Relative to the snowpack depth at 3,700’ at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake, what is the snowpack depth like on
Jay Peak up around their 3,862’ summit elevation? We can’t say for sure, but based on personal trips to the
Jay Peak area, especially the nearby backcountry, when I’ve been able to compare visits to the
Bolton/
Stowe area, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was
at least as deep as what is reported from the
Mt. Mansfield Stake. There’s a bit more elevation than 3,700’ near the summit of
Jay Peak, and from everything we observe, more snowfall as well, but it’s hard to know how much deeper the snowpack might be. In any case, I brought this snowfall/snowpack correlation up because as much as folks love to attempt to pick apart
Jay Peak’s snowfall reporting from hundreds or thousands of miles away, and there’s really not much for the resort to push back with because of their lack of transparency and rigor, the
Mt. Mansfield snowpack depth is a piece of hard, objective data that is hard to refute. The depth at the
Mt. Mansfield Stake is what it is (I think
Powderfreak and his crew even do the observations and get daily pictures?) and if you’re going to get to those depths, snowfall of 3X the snowpack depth is not at all outside the realm of possibility.
3) The final topic I have for people to think about is an email I received on Friday from Seth Kutikoff, one of the meteorologists from the
National Weather Service in Burlington. He sent this out to those of us who are members of the
CoCoRaHS weather observation program (the
VT-WS-19 site in the snowfall table he provides is actually our site here in
Waterbury).
Good morning and happy holidays!
First off, thank you for contributing to this wonderful precipitation observing network in recent days, and for many of you, weeks, months, and years. I love seeing your observation notes, and all of us at the National Weather Service appreciate the daily snowfall, SWE, and/or snow depth data that you can provide. It has been used to do local studies on model performance of snow to liquid ratios, in addition to helping produce our normal forecast verification, so it is valuable to us as I'm sure it across the weather and water professional world.
Season Snowfall To Date
It's been a busy season for you all so far, no more so this current week when nearly every day brings about new snow. Contrast this with conditions before October 20th when we had long stretches without a drop of precipitation - quite a difference two months makes!
Through Christmas morning, here's our top 10 snowfall winners so far this cold season:
Interestingly, the top two snowfall totals are located on either side of the northern Green Mountain spine near Jay Peak.
I just found it very interesting that the notable snowfall in the
Jay Peak area has been a topic of discussion here in the forum, and Seth made that final comment in his email about the trends in the
CoCoRaHS observations thus far this season.
